Recently, I was told that you can tell a lot about an author by the villains they write into their stories. Maybe it does say something about you if your villains are always certain archetypes. It might say something about your past, or what your fears are, or the way your twisted little mind works.
When I heard that, though, what I thought about was, as much as I like the bad guy to win, I don’t really like “bad guys” all that much in my stories. That is to say, “bad guys” and “villains” tend to bore me a bit. I prefer a bit more complexity. At the very least, I’d like my antagonist to have some sort of logical basis for what he’s doing. I’d like him or her to be a sympathetic figure in at least some way. I think I crave moral ambiguity in my stories; I like for it to be totally defensible to root for the antagonist to win. [Read more…] about Do Away with Pesky Villains